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Unit 11: Social Mobility

3. To know the movement into the elite positions in society. Notes
4. To have a concern with the movement of the working classes of the society.
5. The effects of mobility upon class attitudes and class consciousness, particularly in the working
class.
6. The effects of mobility upon class attitudes and attributes on an individual’s or group’s
possibilities for moving.
7. The effects of mobility upon the mobile individual.
“Mobility is measured as that of a family or that of an individual.” In the case of a family, it is
intergenerational mobility. In the case of an individual, it is intragenerational mobility. Stratum mobility
remains generally neglected. However, in Indian society, caste mobility implies group/stratum
mobility. Mobility can be measured in terms of frequency, stability and height. In terms of these
criteria of measurement of mobility, economic, social and political mobility are taken into
consideration. Occupational mobility remains prominent in all societies as the key yardstick, but its
measurement in terms of income, skill and direction, position/office, prestige and subjective
concerns, is a quite difficult task.

11.1 Social Mobility

P.A. Sorokin’s classical work Social and Cultural Mobility provides a vivid conceptualization of
social mobility and its ramifications. According to Sorokin, there are two principal types of social
mobility — horizontal and vertical. By horizontal social mobility is meant the transition of an individual
(or social object) from one social group to another situated on the same level. By vertical social
mobility is meant the relations involved in the transition of an individual (or a social object) from
one social stratum to another. There are also two types of vertical social mobility : ascending and
descending or social climbing and social sinking. Depending upon the nature of stratification, one can
see ascending and descending currents of economic, political and occupational mobility.

“By social mobility is understood any transition of an individual or social object or value
- anything that has been created or modified by human activity–from one social position
to another.”

The ascending currents exist in two main forms : (i) as an infiltration of the individuals of a lower
stratum into an existing higher one; and (ii) as a creation of a new group by which individuals,
and the insertion of such a group into a higher stratum instead of or side by side with the existing
groups of this stratum. Similarly, descending currents have also two forms : (i) dropping of individuals
from a higher social position into an existing lower one; and (ii) degradation of a social group as
a whole, in an abasement of its rank among other group, or in its disintegration as a social unit.
The first case is of sinking of an individual, and the second implies the sinking of a stratum/unit.
Thus, there are two patterns : (i) ascending/descending of an individual, and (ii) ascending/
descending of groups.
Sorokin also makes a distinction between the intensiveness and the generality of the vertical mobility.
By the intensiveness is meant the vertical social distance, or the number of strata -economic or
occupational or political - crossed by an individual in his upward or downward movement in a
definite period of time. By the generality is meant the number of individuals who have changed
their social position in the vertical direction in a definite period of lime. This could be further
distinguished as the absolute generality and the relative generality of the vertical mobility in terms of

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